


Adios

by LydiaN



Category: Pop Music RPF, The Monkees
Genre: Death References, Gen, Illnesses, Language, RPF, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2012-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaN/pseuds/LydiaN
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The "survivors" reflect together after Davy Jones' memorial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adios

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is purely speculative. Nothing to see/sue here.
> 
> I wrote this because I needed to see it. I dearly hope that these three men have made their peace with one another.

***  
ADIOS  
***

Sixty-six. 

Micky shook his head as the balloons, one for each year of David's life, began their ascent. 

Sixty-six. It was not enough.

Donna pressed his hand and gave him an encouraging smile. He knew that people were watching him, waiting to see his reactions. Even in this small gathering, at his own home, people were expecting him to be "on," to perform. It was ghoulish and wrong. So, so wrong.

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Micky gestured at a few balloons that had moored themselves in a tree. "He's not leaving while the lights are still on."

Light laughter greeted his quip, even from Peter, who stood nearby wiping away the mist that tears had created on his glasses. 

Then there were the children, Davy's girls and the others who were able to get there. Wonder of wonders, even Michael was there. Micky had dreaded calling him to invite him to the memorial. The man, as it turned out, was still full of surprises. Instead of the polite-but-firm refusal Micky had expected, Michael had immediately thanked him and asked what he could do to help.

You just never knew with that guy, Micky told himself. 

Jason grabbed an umbrella and poked the last of the recalcitrant balloons aloft, to Emily's and Talia's cheers. As if on cue, the guests began to take their leave. The "kids"--older than Micky had been in those heady Monkee days, and when the hell had THAT happened?--drifted away, chatting in pairs and threes.

The caterers began stacking chairs and clearing away the food and drink. Donna gave Micky a kiss on the cheek as she whisked Pam inside, leaving Micky alone with Peter and Michael. 

Without David. 

The three men gravitated to the side of the pool. Micky and Michael dropped onto the well-cushioned rattan sofa while Peter pulled an ottoman in front of them and perched on it. There they were, together for the first time in over a decade, sharing a loss only they could comprehend. 

Uncharacteristically, it was Peter who broke the silence. "It was thoughtful of you to do this, Micky," he said softly. 

"Well, I had to do something, you know?" 

"No one would've blamed you if you hadn't. He hurt you - he hurt all of us at one time or another."

Peter's statement stung. Yes, Micky had been badly wounded by some of David's remarks in the press. Their last phone call had been horrific, a fight the likes of which they'd never experienced even at the lowest point in their working relationship. Micky slumped in his chair. "We've all done it, man. But deep down, we don't mean any of it. Not even David, not really. I certainly didn't. I hope you--both of you--know that."

"You don't have that kind of cruelty in you, Micky." It was Michael speaking now, his words laden with emotion. "You never did. You've always had such a gentle soul."

How long had it been since Micky and Michael had spoken? Two years, three? Micky couldn't remember. He glanced at Michael's weary profile. "Thanks. That means..." He trailed off, not trusting his voice.

Michael gave him a wry smile and Micky found himself smiling back. 

"Why did we do it, anyway?" It was Peter again, his expression darkening with the evening sky. "Me making cracks about your playing back in '97, Mike--you didn't deserve that. That crap David said about not wanting to be on stage with Micky again. What was the point? Trying to build ourselves back up by shooting one another down? That's just madness."

"That's just human nature," Michael drawled. "The worst of it is that it's preventable. All I had to do was shut my damn mouth, but I just had to go on and on--"

"Not really," Micky broke in. "David, God rest his soul, had an endless supply of negative shit to say, and Peter and I chimed in, but you hardly ever shot back, Michael, at least not that I can remember. In some ways, you were the quietest of all four of us."

Michael's laugh echoed across the tiled pool area. "And who'd have imagined that?"

They all smiled in silence for a few moments, then Micky said, "By the way, that piece in Rolling Stone...that was a class act, Mike."

Peter nodded his agreement. "You expressed it so beautifully. What you said about the group, about David...it reminded me why I loved him so much. And why the journey was worth the price."

"Aww," Michael murmured, leaning forward and placing his hand gently, briefly, on Peter's knee before sitting back again. "That's very kind, Peter, thank you." He took a breath of the evening air. "I saw both of you on television, you know, those interviews you did. You handled yourselves really well. I couldn't have done anything live, couldn't have handled having to talk to anyone. My heart was too burdened. I'd have said something foolish that I'd spend the rest of my life retracting, you know?"

Micky knew all too well. He'd thrown his share of verbal harpoons at the other three, only to hate himself once the metaphorical blood had been spilled. "Yeah, about that interview, Pete - you'd been saying for a while that you loved, liked, and respected us in different ratios, and you said it again to Maddow."

"Thanks for making Michael's point about needing a lifetime of retraction, Mick," Peter groused.

"You've used that line a lot. So, now we know that it was Davy you loved," Micky said, grinning. "What ratio of respect to love to friendship do Michael and I get from you?"

Peter removed his glasses and wiped them on his tie, but he did not replace them on the bridge of his nose. Micky saw tears in the dark eyes, threatening to spill over. A pang of guilt tightened his chest. "Oh, hey, Peter, I'm sorry..."

With a wave of his hand, Peter silenced Micky. "It's okay. I just...wasn't ready for this, you know? I wasn't prepared to eulogize any of you. I thought I'd go first. That, I was ready for."

Micky swallowed hard. He'd thought the same thing in the years following Peter's cancer treatments. Last year on the tour, nearly every night, he'd feared that Peter would simply collapse in the middle of a performance. Even now, cleared of the dreaded disease, despite the sunshine in his smile, Peter still looked so frail.

"I know how you feel, Peter. When I bothered to wonder which of us would be the first to die, I assumed it'd be me," Michael said. Despite the photographs he'd seen in the past year, Micky had been shocked at how old and worn Michael had appeared in the flesh. This new burden, the leaden weight of David's death, made him seem as vulnerable as Peter. "Hell, with my eyes going and Vicky walking out on me, I dreamed about dying. Prayed for it, even. More than a few times, I..." He cleared his throat and looked down, away from his friends' shocked eyes. "...I thought about...maybe doing something to hurry it along."

Aghast, Micky leaned over and draped his arm around Michael's shoulder. He saw Peter reach for Michael's hand and clasp it between both his own. "I didn't know," Peter whispered. "Honestly, when you fell off the radar I just assumed that you were holed up on one of your projects."

"That's exactly what I thought. It didn't occur to me..." Micky trailed off, shaking his head. He couldn't bear to think of Michael, that most independent of men, alone in an increasingly darkening world as his wife and friends abandoned him to his fate. Michael was certainly capable of being an asshole when the opportunity arose, but no one deserved to be utterly deserted. "I just...had no idea..."

"I wasn't sending out a lot of signals," Michael explained. He gently pulled his hand away from Peter's grasp and patted him on the arm as he spoke again. "I thought it was an enormous piece of cosmic punishment, going blind. Some 'visionary' I was, some 'video pioneer,' couldn't see his hand in front of his face."

"But it's okay now, right?" Micky could hear the anxiety in his own voice.

"I can probably see better now than ever in my life. Physically and metaphorically, by the way." At Micky's quizzical gaze, Michael shook his head ruefully. "Part of the reason I kept it to myself was that I didn't want you to know. Whenever I thought about having one of my kids phone you up, I stopped myself."

"Why?" Micky and Peter asked in unison.

"I used to think that the worst part would be your pity, but that was wrong. What I really feared was your contempt, or even worse, your indifference. Don't," he said, holding up a hand in warning as Micky opened his mouth to refute the statement.

"Last summer, Christian was at my place watching television--I was only listening to it, because the screen was pretty much nothing but a bright greenish blur by that point--and you guys came on to do an interview. Just as Christian nearly had me convinced that it was time to talk to you about what was happening...well, the program was 'The View,' which was deliciously ironic because I could hear you but couldn't see you."

"Oh, God." Peter hunched over and Micky hid his face in his hands. They had, all three of them, eviscerated Michael on that show. No wonder Christian had sent a terse e-mail declining Micky's invitation to the memorial. 

Michael continued in a strained murmur. "It was the last time I heard David's voice."

Shit.

"I'm so sorry," Micky choked out. "God, what you must've thought..."

"I won't pretend," Michael said, his voice thick, "that it didn't hurt, or that I didn't brood about it afterwards. I spent a few days nursing my grievances, imagining how crappy you'd feel once you learned that you'd taken pot-shots at a blind man."

"Really, really crappy," Micky groaned. "If it makes you feel any better, we had a knock-down, drag-out argument about it later that day. I think we all felt lousy, knocking you the way we did. Even David was, you know, a little sorry."

"Once you yelled at him," Peter reminded Micky. 

With a sharp, barking laugh, Michael patted Micky's arm. "That does help, actually," he snickered, then he turned serious again. "But in the end I realized how badly my pride and arrogance must have hurt you. Especially David. No amount of bitterness he had toward me could come close to the bitterness I felt against myself. It was at that moment that I realized my blindness was karmic punishment for the short-sightedness of my behavior. Not just you three, but Phyllis--what she went through her last few years was unimaginable--and the kids. I decided that I had been a world-class schmuck and I deserved darkness and death."

Peter blinked a few times. "I can't imagine going through that," he mumbled brokenly. "You must've been so afraid. And there we were, piling more pain on top of it. God, I was useless. I was nowhere, no help, nothing."

"It wasn't your fight, Peter. I wasn't around for your fight, come to that."

"I didn't let you in. Either of you." It was true; Micky remembered how Peter had rebuffed their attempts at communication. "You offered to send me to the best doctors money could buy, Micky, and I told you to shove your money up your ass. Michael, you offered me prayers and I told you to get lost. "

"Didn't work. I prayed anyway," Michael rejoindered. "What I should've done is another story. I should've marched right up to your house and broken down the door." He sighed and looked straight at Peter. "If I were any kind of a man at all, that's what I'd have done."

Peter had evidently been thinking along the same lines. "And I should've broken down yours."

Peter had nearly lost his voice and Michael his sight. Micky had nearly lost both men, and they had all relinquished David somewhere along the line. He could tell by Peter's shining eyes and Michael's trembling lips that they understood and shared his suffering.

They used to share only memories and regret. Now they also shared grief.

Death. A hell of a way to keep your friends.

"One thing we can be sure of, gentlemen," Micky announced, trying to break the somber mood. "We could not have fucked up this relationship more if we'd tried." 

"Truer words were never spoken," Peter agreed. He swiped angrily at the tears that slid down his cheeks.

Michael shifted his weight, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and handed it to Peter. "At least this time it's tears and not blood," he deadpanned, reminding them of the fist-fight Peter and David had gotten into. Michael had staunched Peter's wound that day, while Micky tended to the impressive gash that had landed David in the emergency room for stitches.

"Fuck off, Nesmith," Peter mumbled as he dabbed at his eyes. 

"And there you have it - my location on the Peter Tork sliding scale of affection," Michael intoned. "No love or like involved, and probably not a lot of respect either."

Micky chuckled. "So David had your love and Michael had your--grudging--respect. That leaves me with being 'liked.' Thanks, Pete."

To his horror, Peter leaned forward and covered his face with his hands. His thin shoulders shook with barely-repressed sobs. "You have no idea. None. You honestly haven't figured it out, either of you."

"Hey, Peter, I'm sorry," Michael said. Micky startled at the words, so unaccustomed was he to hearing Michael apologize for anything. "I was trying to lighten us up and I failed. It's okay, really. I know you loved me, even when you didn't like me too much."

"How can you possibly know--"

"Because that's how I felt about you. All three of you. I loved you like brothers--not that I really knew what that was like, but I could guess--and that means, once in a while, totally losing my cool around you." Michael took a breath. "It also meant that, as a weak human, I ended up saying things that should never have been given thought, much less voice. For that, I truly am sorry, Peter. Micky. Sorrier than you can possibly imagine, especially now that I've lost my chance to say it to David."

Micky pondered those words. Before he had time to formulate a reply, Peter had begun to speak.

"Most of the time I was being snide by implying that I 'only' respected you, Mike. But that wasn't true. I might have thought it a few times, but...no. You stood up for me at that very first recording session when you didn't have to, and I never stopped loving you for it." He turned to Micky. "And Micky, you were such a good friend that I couldn't help but love you. And if that hadn't been enough...everything you learned about music, man, none of us grew the way you did. It wasn't just 'hey, he's a cool dude.' I respected the hell out of you. Always will."

Michael tugged at Peter's wrist. "C'mere, come up and sit with your stupid fat brothers who didn't have the good sense to appreciate you." Micky, nodding, shifted closer to Michael and patted the space to his right, placing himself in between the only two men in the world who understood the whirlwind of pain and regret he felt at the loss of David Jones.

A thoughtful silence fell on them as they processed Peter's statement. 

"Michael?" Micky asked after a long pause. 

"What, Micky?"

"There's something I want---no, need--to ask you."

MIchael's brow creased with concern. "What, Micky?" he asked again.

Peter turned to watch the interplay. Micky looked from one to the other, trying to control the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Got another one of those handkerchiefs?"

"I oughtta throw you in the pool," Michael growled. Peter lowered his forehead to Micky's shoulder and groaned. 

Micky wrapped his arms around his friends and pulled them tightly to him. "I don't want to let you go," he said softly. He stroked Peter's hair, still the consistency of cornsilk, and mussed the stubborn thatch of pure white at the back of Michael's head. "I don't want to think that I won't see one of you until we bury the other one."

"Not gonna happen," Michael said firmly.

"Of course not," Peter agreed. He leaned into Micky's caress like a cat, eyes glinting as he winked at Michael. "Mike and I will see each other when we bury YOU."

Micky drew his hands away and folded them primly in his lap. "I hate you both so much right now," he declaimed with his best attempt at indignant rancor.

Peter began to laugh. As it had ever been, Peter's mirth was infectious and all three men found themselves bubbling over with it. Through laughter and tears, they embraced and healed and promised, truly meaning it, to keep their unlikely brotherhood intact.

MIcky lifted his eyes to where one last, stubborn balloon was finally dislodging itself from the eaves of the house. As it floated heavenward, Micky moved his lips in a silent benediction.

_Adios, mi amigo. And thank you for this second chance._

***  
END  
***


End file.
